


Space Oddity

by tfm



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Gen, Space Opera
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26460625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tfm/pseuds/tfm
Summary: It's been three days since Mollymauk Tealeaf and his best friend Yasha ran away from the circus and stole the Moondrop & Fletchling.It's been twenty minutes since a stowaway with a dangerous secret fell out of the ceiling on top of him.It's been three minutes since they started to fall into the gravity well of a dead planet.Or, Molly and Yasha stole a spaceship to start a new life, and the disasters they meet along with way.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Mollymauk Tealeaf, Beauregard Lionett & Mollymauk Tealeaf & Yasha, Beauregard Lionett & Yasha, Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Mollymauk Tealeaf & Yasha
Comments: 44
Kudos: 164





	1. I

I.

They were halfway to Zadash when Molly found the stowaway.

Found was probably the wrong word. He’d been going through the passageways of the ship systematically, trying to figure out what in the blazes was setting off the oxygen toxicity alarm, when she literally fell from the ceiling and landed on top of him.

At the time, he’d been leaning over to try and figure out why there were patches of dried blood on the floor, so at least he was low to the ground when it happened.

Two things soon became very apparent: 1) the source of the blood was a nasty looking wound on the stowaway’s abdomen, and 2) Molly was not nearly as strong as he thought he was. It took several tries to push the woman off of him, even just so he could breath properly.

Then, he put a hand to his ear. ‘Yasha. We’ve got a problem.’

The fact that they had a problem wasn’t news to Yasha. They’d had a problem ever since they’d stolen the _Moondrop & Fletchling _from Desmond, realizing perhaps a little too late that if you were going to steal a spaceship, it was a pretty good idea if you knew how to fly one. Molly had a little bit of an idea, and Yasha had a little bit of an idea, but a little bit of an idea was not much when you were in the dead of space, and the toxicity alarm was going off.

‘ _How big of a problem?_ ’

Molly stared at the stowaway. ‘Maybe a hundred and thirty pounds?’ He wasn’t particularly good at judging weight, especially in humans. The woman was of a slight build, but judging by the cut of her jumpsuit (nondescript, navy blue), surprisingly muscular. Definitely not someone that spent a lot of time in space. Her skin was a soft, dark brown, and her head was shaved at the sides.

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ Yasha said. She didn’t swear all that often, but the severity of the situation definitely called for it. ‘ _I’ll be right there._ ’

It wasn’t a big ship; not by Empirical Navy standards, at least. The only thing that Desmond and Gustav had been hauling around the system was a bunch of carnies. No cargo, or weapons, or anything that you could smoke to have a good time. There were only two decks, one of which was made up entirely of the cockpit and a storage closet.

Consequently, Yasha was there in less than a minute, evidently having put the ship into autopilot. That was the great thing about space; things were very, very far apart. As long as you had a trajectory, there was very little precise guiding until you wanted to land, presuming you didn’t care about timing too much.

Admittedly, they _did_ care about getting away quickly, given that the ship...well, belonged to someone else. Moving on an unpredictable course, though, was no bad thing. They had mostly been hoping that the big, fuck-off planet they were flying past would camouflage them a bit.

Yasha looked down at the body. ‘Fuck,’ she said again. Two in one day, that practically called for a party. ‘Is she dead?’

Molly put a hand to the woman’s neck. He was surprised to find a very slow pulse. ‘No. Shit.’ He made to pick her up, but before he could even try, Yasha had hoisted the woman into her arms.

‘That looks like a maintenance jumpsuit,’ Yasha commented. Molly looked again, and realized that she was right. A sudden, horrific thought struck him.

‘Hey Yash? They were actually _finished_ repairing this ship when we stole it, right?’

‘I thought so,’ Yasha admitted. If Molly was honest, he would say that he hadn’t quite bothered checking. He’d assumed that they’d finished, but then, they hadn’t spent a long time checking. Not wanting to get caught stealing a spaceship had been slightly higher on their list of priorities.

The medical bay was small. There was a single bed in there, and a first aid kit that hadn’t been particularly well-stocked, even when there had been a full crew on the ship. Certainly not well-stocked enough to complete what could have been complicated surgery. Hopefully, a healing potion would do the trick.

Yasha set the woman down on the bed. For the first time, Molly noticed a name stitched in white on the breast pocket of the jumpsuit. “Traci,” it read. Hmm. She didn’t look like a Traci.

Molly hesitated slightly, but Yasha didn’t. She took a pair of medical shears from the bench, and cut the jumpsuit open to reveal a t-shirt that might have been white, once upon a time, but was now stained with blood. ‘Yasha, do my eyes deceive me or does that look like a bullet wound?’

Bullet wounds were...well, they weren’t rare. A lot of gangs still used weapons with bullets, as did ground forces. But the problem with bullets in spaceships was...well, if you missed, it wasn’t great. From the size of the wound, it was a small caliber bullet, but it had clearly was old enough that blood loss had done its damage.

Well either way, it was confusing. Either this woman had or hadn’t stowed away, and maybe she was, or she wasn’t maintenance. But there was still a rapidly bleeding wound in her gut, and the oxygen toxicity alarm was still going off, which meant that in a bit, it was potentially going to get very hard to breathe.

‘If she’s maintenance, then she might be able to do something about that,’ Yasha said, nodding to the ceiling, where the alarm blared.

Right. Plus, of course, they were both fine upstanding citizens that weren’t about to let someone die, just because they might have been a stowaway. ‘Sure,’ Yasha said, deadpan, when Molly mentioned it. He wasn’t sure he believed her.

In any case, there was anesthetic, and there were a couple of healing potions in the first aid kit. He loaded up one of them into a syringe, and jabbed it into the woman’s thigh. She gave a guttural gasp, and her entire body arched. Her eyes flashed open, and she grabbed out at the closest thing to her, which happened to be Yasha’s arm.

Hmm. Her eyes were blue. Molly wasn’t sure why, buy he was kind of expecting them to be brown. ‘Where the fuck am I?’ Her voice was low, and kind of throaty.

‘You’re on a spaceship,’ Molly told her. ‘Heading to Zadash. Care to tell us why you stowed away?’ The woman – Traci? – collapsed back onto the bed, hand not moving from Yasha’s arm. Her other hand went to her stomach, to the wound that had just now stopped bleeding, and had turned into a pinkish-white scar.

‘Someone was chasing me,’ she said, evasively. It wasn’t a lie, or, at the very least, it had a ring of truth to it. But there was definitely more to the story.

‘Someone that was firing _bullets_ at you?’

‘I’m a data courier,’ Traci said. ‘Lot of people don’t want me to get where I need to go.’

_That_ made things a little bit clearer. Data couriers _did_ have pretty dangerous jobs in general. That was the thing about cloud internet – it was insecure as fuck. That was why people hired data couriers to move their data across the system. It was a lot harder to hack someone’s information when it was on a stick in a shielded pocket.

Hence the bullets. Some people were more than willing to kill to either protect or steal data.

'What's the packet?' Yasha asked, and the woman gave her an incredulous look. She really should have known better. Couriers generally weren't told anything about the “what,” or even the “why.” They were generally told “Take this from Place A to Place B and don't ask any questions.”

'I didn't ask,' Traci said, coolly. Molly was beginning to think that her name wasn't actually Traci. That she had just stolen someone's jumpsuit in a rush to be in disguise. Before Molly could consider asking what the fuck was going on, a second, louder alarm started going off.

Not!Traci jumped to her feet, wincing slightly. Healing potions were great, but they didn't really stop anyone from hurting like a bitch for a few hours afterwards. 'Do you have someone piloting the ship?' she asked.

'It's on autopilot,' Yasha told her.

Not!Traci swore. She crossed the medical bay to a viewing screen, and, before Molly could stop her, had brought up the observation deck view. It would have taken him three hours, and a manual without all the information in it if he'd tried. It had taken Not!Traci four seconds. All that, though, was a problem for another time. The more pressing problem was the fact that an enormous planet was filling up half the screen. It didn't look familiar, but then, all planets looked unfamiliar to Molly. In the circus, they'd only ever really gone to backwater worlds that all looked the same, with small settlements that were unlikely to report a group of eclectic strangers to the Empire.

Even still, this world sent a shiver down Molly's spine. It was cold and dark. There were no signs of life, and there would never be. It was, in all senses of the word, a dead planet.

Not!Traci took a deep breath. 'Why did you plot a course that went into low orbit of Bazzoxan?' she asked. It was a very judgmental voice, and Molly found that he didn't like it one bit.

'We were trying to get the fuck away from someone at great speed,' Molly told her, though really, he didn't see how it was any of her business. He'd never heard of Bazzoxan, but from the look on Yasha's face, it was bad news. 'What's Bazzoxan?' he asked.

'It's a ship graveyard,' Yasha told him. 'The planet's gravity...we need to change course _now_.' Before waiting for an answer, she had run off towards the cockpit.

Molly didn't move. 'How did _you_ know that?' he asked Not!Traci. In his experience, data couriers were, well, stupid. They didn't ask questions. A data courier that asked questions was one that didn't last long in the business. They either stopped getting work because they were too curious, or they got murdered because they'd found out the wrong thing. They tended to be shit-kickers that had tried everything else, but still weren't aware enough to realize that they could get ten times more money by selling the data.

'You pick up things,' Not!Traci said, blithely, and she moved to follow Yasha. Molly grabbed her by the arm, and stopped her from moving any further. He wanted answers.

She flipped him onto his ass.

At least, that was what Molly thought happened. One moment, he had her wrist, and the next he was sort of sailing through the air. He landed heavily, the wind knocked out of him. She was already moving. Molly reached out a hand, and blinded her.

She stopped in her tracks, put a hand to her head, and swung around wildly. Her eyes were dark red with blood, from the maledict. 'What the fuck did you do?' She lashed out with a foot to where she clearly thought that Molly was lying.

'Don't worry, it'll fade in about six seconds,' Molly told her. He used that six seconds to get to his feet, and get well the fuck out of limb reach. 'Who are you really?' he asked, when the blood curse faded. The woman looked like she was about ready to murder him. 'Because you're sure as fuck not a data courier.' Molly knew enough about lying to know when someone else was, given that he was such a proficient liar himself. Or at least a practiced one.

'I'm not going to tell you that,' she said, and headed off towards the cockpit.

'At least tell me your real name!' he called out after her.

She didn't turn around, but she did say a single word, that took him several seconds to actually process: 'Beau.'

Huh. Well, that was something. Thirty billion people in the galaxy, and he knew two people named Beau. Or Bo. Whatever. Spelling wasn't his strong suit.

He ran after Beau, not wanting to let her be the one to tell – or not tell – Yasha what had happened. As it turned out, Yasha really didn't need to be told, on account of the fact that Beau was still bleeding a little bit from the eyes.

Yasha gave Molly a look. 'Was that really necessary?' she asked. Molly thought that it might have been a little petulant for him to say “she hurt me,” plus, he kind of didn't want to admit how easily he'd been overpowered. Definitely some kind of combat training. Not that data couriers didn't have combat training.

From the cockpit, the view of Bazzoxan was...well, it was impressive. They were accelerating out of the pull of the planet's orbit, but even then, it seemed to take up half the right side of the windshield. Not that there was any wind in space.

There were brown and white swirling clouds; what looked like a huge storm, centered over...he wasn't sure _what_ it was centered over. The planet didn't have any continents, on account of the fact that it was as dry as a bone. Even the clouds...well, Molly didn't know shit about science, but he was capable of reading the meteorological scan that came up on one of the monitors.

If they crash-landed here, they were _fucked_. Even if they didn't die on impact, there was no way that they would survive whatever followed. Molly knew that he wasn't going to be of much help in this situation.

'Beau,' he said. 'You any good at piloting?'

'Probably better than you,' she answered, and that was enough. Molly pushed her towards the co-pilot's seat.

It apparently did not take Beau too long to figure out that Yasha was at least as inexperienced at piloting as Molly. 'Alright,' she said. 'We're gonna have to do something crazy to get out of this, but you're gonna have to trust me, okay?'

Neither Molly nor Yasha said anything, so Beau continued. 'We are gonna need a fuckton more thrust than this ship is capable of to escape orbit, and the only way that happens is if we do a dump and burn.'

Molly didn't like the sound of either of those words. 'Dump and burn what, exactly?'

'Fuel,' Beau said, and Molly decided that he _definitely_ didn't like the sound of that. 'You've got close to a full tank, which is all weight that's pulling us down towards the planet's surface. We're gonna need to lose some of the fuel, and put on a fuckton of speed at exactly the right time.'

Yasha, at least seemed to understand some of those words. Or understand enough that she was even less convinced that Molly. But, if the alternative was to get sucked down by the planet's gravity, Molly supposed they would have to take the risk. 'Tell me what to do,' Yasha said.

Beau took a breath. Molly wasn't sure, but she looked nervous. 'Okay,' she said. 'If we try and just straight up leave the exosphere, we're not going to have nearly enough thrust. What we have to do is lose the fuel, then maintain orbit until we reach the highest point of it. Then, you're going to need to activate the thrusters. Like revving a car engine.' The metaphor didn't quite work in space, but what it _did_ tell Molly was that Beau was land-born. Interesting.

Molly watched as Beau accessed the fuel reserves. 'Don't they like...stop people from tampering with that sort of thing?' he asked.

'Sure,' Beau agreed. 'But if you know where the back doors are, you can get into anything.' She said it so matter-of-factly, like she was telling him about that latest space cruise she'd been on. Who the fuck _was_ this woman, that she was pretending to be a data courier, and had very specific knowledge about how to prevent spaceships from crashing into planets. The only sort of person that would fit that bill would be either a highly-trained agent of the Empire, or some kind of spy.

Molly watched as the fuel indicators dropped to just under half. 'That's not a lot,' he commented. What he meant, was that half a tank wasn't going to get them very far. What Beau _thought_ he meant was that she hadn't dumped much.

'Don't worry,' she told him. 'Firing those thrusters is gonna use up about half of what we've got left.'

Until she'd said that, Molly hadn't quite been worrying. _Now_ he was worrying. Where could they possibly get to on a quarter of a tank of fuel?

'Okay,' Beau told Yasha. 'When I say now, activate the thrusters.'

'Right.' There was a very, very long pause. 'Which ones are the thrusters?'

Somehow, they managed to make it out alive. Beau said “now,” and Yasha fired the thrusters, and Molly realized – far too late – that he really should have been sitting down with his safety-belt on, because almost immediately, he found himself flung backwards into the cockpit door. Judging from the laugh that came from the co-pilot's seat, Beau had definitely been expecting that.

What an asshole.

By the time Molly had managed to peel himself away from the door, they were back to cruising at what felt like about a tenth of what would have been normal speed.

'All systems look normal,' Yasha was saying. She didn't sound entirely sure, though, and gave Molly sort of a shrug. He shrugged back. They were alive. That was something.

'That's great.' Beau put her hands on her head. Molly realized, suddenly, that she was sweating considerably. She hadn't expected that to work. 'Oh, man. Oh, holy fuck.' She unbuckled her safety-belt, and slumped in the chair.

'Thanks for the save.' Molly knew he had to say thank-you, even though he was still mildly annoyed at having been flipped. And at not having been warned. And at the fact that Beau was just kind of unpleasant in general. 'Where can we drop you off?'

'Molly,' Yasha said, in a chastising sort of voice. Molly gave her a look.

'She's a stowaway, Yash.'

'A stowaway on a stolen ship,' Beau said, pointedly, and Molly didn't have a response to that. There were mitigating circumstances, but he could hardly explain that in this moment. 'Anyway, whatever. You can drop me off in Zadash if you're heading that way. But we've got a much bigger problem.' Molly stared at her. When he didn't say anything, she continued. 'I dumped eighty percent of your fuel. There's enough power in the ship's batteries to keep us on target, but without thrust, it's going to be a long journey.'

'How long?'

'To Zadash? About six weeks, assuming nothing else happens.'

_Six weeks_? Well that...that pretty much sucked.

'Is there anything closer?' Molly didn't know much about the geography of the Empire systems. He knew enough to know the places that he needed to avoid.

Beau gave him a look. 'You really have no idea what you're doing, do you?'

'Hey, this is _our_ ship—'

'Stolen ship.'

'—this is our stolen ship, so if you don't like it, we'll quite happily chuck you out the airlock.'

Beau turned back towards the ship controls. 'I will absolutely put us back into orbit, if you want me, asshole, and once I do we absolutely don't have enough fuel to get back out again, so if I die, you die.' There was a resolute look on her face, and Molly was suddenly certain that she would actually do it. This was a person that didn't seem to give a shit if she lived or died, as long as the job got done. What the job was, _that_ was the real question.

Beau stared at her bloody, sweaty, disgusting clothes. 'Do you have a shower on this thing? Because I really fucking need one. Some clothes that aren't stained in blood probably wouldn't go astray either.' She gave Molly an expectant sort of look.

Well, fuck.

The oxygen toxicity alarm continued to blare.

It was going to be a long six weeks.


	2. II

II

Almost immediately, Molly declared that he didn't want anything to do with the woman. Beau, he called her. Not Traci. It was all very confusing, and Yasha wasn't sure if it was one of those things that no-one was supposed to get, or one of the things that it was only her that didn't get it, and everyone else was just too polite to say anything.

Either way, Beau figured out a way to turn off the toxicity alarm. 'Looks like the scrubbers need replacing, but with only three people on board, we should last most of the way to Zadash.'

'Most of the way?' Yasha asked. She didn't much like the sound of that.

'Well, enough of the way that we've got time to figure out a better solution.' Beau shrugged. She didn't seem too worried, so Yasha decided that she wouldn't be too worried about it either.

She took Beau to the sleeping quarters first. Beau didn't have anything on her, save for a few bits and pieces in the jumpsuit. No spare clothes, no toothbrush, not even a wallet. There was a personal comms device, but it didn't look like any Yasha had ever seen. Not that that meant much. In the circus, they often had to buy things third hand, by which point they were about five years out of date. This could have just been a newer model.

'Some of Ornna's things might fit you.' Yasha eyed the woman. She wasn't particularly tall, or muscular, but she had the sort of body that some work had clearly been put into. Not that Yasha was staring. Definitely wasn't staring as Beau stripped down to her bloody underwear. Yasha kept her eyes focused on the multitude of scars that seemed to cover her body, rather than anything else. There were at least a dozen of them, that Yasha could see, the most prominent of which was the brand new one on her abdomen from a gunshot wound. Beau hardly seemed to notice it.

Beau grimaced. 'You wouldn't happen to have a hot tub on board, would you? An extra large tub? Maybe with room for two people?' She winked, and Yasha tried very hard to ignore it.

'No.' She was pretty sure it hadn't been a serious question, but she decided to give it an answer anyway. 'There is a decontamination chamber.'

'Ah well, worth a shot.'

The decontamination chamber was...well, it was small. The  _Moondrop & Fletchling _ wasn't designed for long journeys. One week was about as much as Yasha could take before it got stifling, but that had been with ten people. With three, it might be a little easier, even if six weeks was...well it wasn't ideal.

'Thanks.' Beau nodded as Yasha opened the door. She didn't seem surprised by its small size, but then, it seemed that she had a decent amount of experience with ships like this one. At least enough to be able to stop it from crashing into Bazzoxan, and to turn off the oxygen toxicity alarm.

'I think she's a spy,' Molly announced, when Yasha returned to the cockpit. He'd been sitting in the co-pilot's seat, playing around with some of the buttons. One of them had turned the lights from a piercing white to a nice, soft blue. Yasha frowned. She did not answer, but sat down in the pilot's seat. They seemed to be on course, and the course that they were on did not seem to be intersecting with any planets that would send them to an early grave. 'A spy, or an agent of the Empire. You remember those stories that Desmond used to tell about Scourgers, right?'

Yasha did remember. Desmond and Gustav had both, once upon a time, worked for the Empire. Desmond had told all of them stories about the Empires ruthless assassins, who would sneak across the galaxy under the cover of darkness just to slit a throat. He told them, not because he thought that they would be targeted by the Scourgers, but because he did not want them being in the company of anyone from the Empire. It had seemed so far away, then. Little more than a fairy tale.

While Yasha didn't believe that Beau was a Scourger, it did bring up a valid point. If they were going to be traveling into the Empire, then they would have to keep an eye out for things like that. Maybe not assassins, but people that didn't have their best interests at heart. People often didn't have their best interests at heart.

Beau...well, she had saved their lives, and Yasha was willing to give her some trust for that alone. It certainly didn't hurt that she had a very nice smile. Not that Yasha was paying attention to things like that.

'I do not think she is a Scourger,' she told Molly.

Molly was unphased. 'Well, she's hiding something,' he said with a huff.

'You just don't like her.'

'Well she's definitely not hiding the fact that she's unpleasant.'

Yasha could not help but roll her eyes. Traveling with the circus had made Molly...well, he tended to not let people make mistakes. First impressions were the ones that stuck. Not that Yasha was any better.

'You like her, don't you?' His voice was somewhat accusatory.

'She's... _intriguing._ ' There was probably a better word that Yasha could have picked. Intriguing was sure to make Molly tease her endlessly.

'Come on, Yasha, intriguing is what you say when you want to fuck someone.'

'Fine then.' Yasha gave a fake sort of sigh. She was too used to Molly's behavior to be in any way bothered by it. 'Interesting. As you said, she's clearly hiding some things. I am curious to find out what they are.'

'Uh huh,' Molly nodded. 'I'm sure she's hiding a lot of things beneath her—' Molly stopped abruptly at the look Yasha gave him. Withering and exasperated, all at once. He was often on the receiving end of that look.

Before Yasha could say anything, though, the door to the cockpit opened. Beau looked much, much better than she had fifteen minutes ago. She wasn't covered in blood at any rate, and she didn't smell of sweat. Yasha sniffed her own armpits. She could probably do with a wash herself.

Orna's clothes fit Beau reasonably well. Certainly better than anyone else's would, except maybe Molly's, and Molly definitely didn't seem like he was planning on sharing his.

Seeing that both seats were taken, Beau plopped onto the floor. 'So, elephant on the spaceship. You guys got any books on board?'

…

For the next week or so, things were pretty boring. They played cards – a lot of cards – and read books, and did all the sorts of things that you did to pass the time when you were trapped in a spaceship together. After a lot of sweating, swearing, and reading a manual that Molly didn't even know existed, Beau managed to fix the oxygen scrubbers, which meant that Molly couldn't even walk through a doorway without her doing pull-ups on it. Once or twice, he had to distract Yasha's attention so that she would stop drooling. In fact, he was pretty sure the main reason Beau kept doing it was to hold Yasha's attention. It certainly seemed to be working, but every time Molly asked Yasha about it, she changed the subject.

Once or twice, though, he caught them sparring in the otherwise empty cargo bay. Desmond had retrofitted it into something of a rec room, in case any of them wanted to practice their acts while in transit. There were definitely more than a few scuff marks on the wall from Molly's swords.

One morning, about a quarter of the way into their voyage (not that time meant anything), he found both of them leaning against separate bulkheads, sweating. Beau, at least, was grinning, even though she had a large black eye. Molly half-wished he could have seen it happen. Still, Beau didn't give him the finger as he approached, which was probably a good sign.

'Having fun, ladies?' Molly asked. He held out a hand to pull Yasha to her feet, but she shook her head, clearly perfectly happy to relax a little while longer.

'Yasha was just showing me how to do an Iothian Piledriver,' Beau said. 'Brutal stuff.' Molly felt his horns perk up slightly at the mention of Yasha's former homeland. Had she—

'Don't take this the wrong way,' Beau said, and Molly was certain that no matter what she said, he was going to take it the wrong way. 'But neither of you look like you're from the Empire.'

Before Molly could say anything, Yasha had spoken. 'Well, I'm from Xhorhas,' she said, and Molly felt his heart drop.

'Hey Yash,' he said, gently.

'Yes?'

'Do you remember that conversation we had about Xhorhas...'

'Yes.'

'And about not letting people know that you're from Xhorhas?'

Yasha's face fell. 'Oh.' She turned to Beau, and said, in a stilted voice, 'I am from Nicodranas.' It was as bad of a lie as Molly had ever heard from her. Beau, thankfully, looked amused rather than aghast. It was kind of hard to tell when one of her eyes was starting to swell over.

'So I'm gonna go ahead and guess that neither of you have Empire I.Ds then.' Oh, shit. Molly hadn't even thought about that.

'Do we need one?'

'If you want to get onto Zadash, yeah. They don't just let anyone through, especially not people from Xhorhas.' She eyed Yasha critically. 'You don't really look like you're from Nicodranas, either.'

Nicodranas was a beach planet on the outer reaches of the system. A nice place, Molly had heard, though he had never been. Anything along the Menagerie Belt was something of a melting pot of cultures and species, which was why they'd chosen it.

'What do people from Nicodranas look like?' Molly asked, curious.

'Well, generally a little more tan.' That, at least, was a fair point. Yasha did not look like she'd ever seen a day of sun in her life, which was a fair assessment. Xhorhas was about as far from the Menagerie Belt as was possible without leaving the system.

'What should we do?' Yasha asked, point blank. She was far more willing to ask for help than Molly was. Maybe it was just because she found Beau attractive.  _Gag_ _._

'I got a buddy on Felderwin,' Beau told them. 'She can get you some I.D.s that will pass any Empire inspection.'

Molly frowned. Felderwin. The name sounded familiar. 'Wait, isn't Felderwin  _also_ in Empire territory?'

'Sure, but it's like...a farming planet. Empire doesn't give a shit, as long as you're not stealing wheat.'

'Does that happen often?'

Beau gave him a blank look. 'What?'

'People getting arrested for stealing wheat.'

A strange look crossed Beau's face. 'You really don't know much about the Empire, do you?' It was kind of a silly question. After all, someone that knew about the Empire probably would have known that you needed I.D. to go to Zadash.

'Well, clearly.'

Beau shrugged. 'They just...they like to arrest people for minor shit. Real draconic stuff, y'know?' She sounded very far away, like she was suddenly having a different conversation altogether. She certainly didn't sound like a spy or Empire agent now. Certainly didn't sound like she approved of what they did. For some reason, this made Molly feel a little better about her.

'Do you have an Empire I.D?' Yasha asked. There was a beat of silence.

'Sure.' Beau pulled out her comms device, and pressed a few buttons. In an instant, an official looking identification card with an Empire seal in the corner was projected onto the wall. Date of Birth, 9th of Cuersaar, 2810 P.D., Place of Birth, Rexxentrum, Name....

Molly stared at it. '“Rainbeau Lacroix.”' He looked back to Beau. 'That is  _not_ your name.'

Beau shrugged. 'I don't care whether you believe it or not. According to Empire records, that's who I am.' Molly was starting to get the strangest feeling that there was a reason that Beau knew a very good forger living on Felderwin.

What good fortune they'd had, that their stowaway was some kind of intergalactic criminal, rather than an Empire agent. He supposed Empire agents probably didn't have to hide on the vessels of disreputable carnivals.

'So Felderwin...is that closer than Zadash?'

'Much, much closer,' Beau told him. 'Probably two weeks at our current speed. But...'

'But what?' Molly definitely didn't like her tone of voice.

'Well, it's a farming planet,' Beau said, as if that explained everything. When neither of them seemed to get what she was saying, she gave a slight huff. 'Means we'd have to land on it. Then make it back into space again somehow.'

'Oh,' Yasha said. It took Molly a few seconds longer.

'Oh.' They'd be stuck in the same situation as they would have been if they'd crashed on Bazzoxan. 'Well, people live on it, right? They send their wheat to other places? Surely there must be some way off the planet.'

'I mean there's always other ways to do things,' Beau told him. 'Steal a ship, steal some fuel, reverse the passage of time...just be ready for things to go sideways, you know? Always a good motto.'

Molly and Yasha shared a glance. They were well acquainted with that motto.

'Well, what's the worst that could happen?' Molly shrugged, aware that he was inviting fate to just come in and fuck things up. 'We just become farmers for the rest of our lives?' He looked to Yasha, who gave a small nod.

'I've always wanted to see what I look like in flannel,' she said.


	3. III

III

Beau plotted out their course to Felderwin, and Yasha watched. It was strange. Yasha had never met someone that was well...that had so many basic skills in so many different areas. Beau clearly wasn't an expert in the matter, but she seemed to have much more of an understanding of what she was doing than either Yasha or Molly did.

Maybe she _was_ a spy.

Yasha had never met a spy before. Or...well, she supposed that you weren't supposed to know if you'd met a spy. So maybe she'd met a spy and didn't know it.

'Where are you from?' Yasha blurted out, as Beau zoomed out on the system chart.

'Rexxentrum,' Beau said, without even thinking about it. Yasha couldn't tell if she was lying or not. Beau's I.D. card had said she was born in Rexxentrum, but that didn't mean anything. Lots of people were born in a different place than where they grew up. Molly didn't even know where he was born.

Rexxentrum was...well, it was the capital of the Empire, and that was about where Yasha's knowledge of the place stopped. She'd never learned more about the Empire than she needed to, and since they'd barely really been near the heart of it, she'd never really needed to.

'That's a big planet, yes?'

This was the question that made Beau pull her gaze from the computer screen. She gave Yasha an incredulous look. It was a look that Yasha was used to receiving. She didn't know much about a lot of things.

'You guys really don't know shit about the Empire, huh?' Beau seemed to be able to voice Yasha's thoughts exactly. 'It's bar none, the most populated planet in the system. Ten billion people. An ecumenopolis.'

'A....what?' Yasha wasn't even sure what Beau had said had been a language she understood, let alone what the word actually meant.

Beau crinkled her brow. 'It means like...the whole world is one city.'

'Is it nice?'

This, Beau did not hesitate before answering. 'No. It's a slimy hellhole where anyone you meet will stab you in the back as soon as look at you, and that's just the government.'

Yasha did not like the sound of any of that. For one thing, she had grown up on a planet that barely even had one city, let alone one that spanned the entire planet. Iothia was one of the smallest planets in the Xhorhas region of the system, and as far as Yasha knew, people had tried colonizing there, but the land had been inhospitable and dangerous. Any building succumbed to the elements in a matter of months, and Yasha had known more than a few people that had had too much to drink one night and fallen into an acid swamp. The only way her tribe had managed to survive was by being nomadic, traveling from place to place so that at least they were experiencing different harsh elements each day.

Now that she thought about it, living in a spaceship was at the very least more comfortable, even if it still felt strange. Every day waking up and seeing those sterile walls...

Yasha would much prefer to be planet-side, even if that meant being in a large city. At least in a city, they weren't going to crash into anything.

'What about Zadash?' Yasha asked. 'Have you been there?'

For some reason, Beau gave a very startled look. Yasha wasn't sure what she had asked that was wrong. 'Yeah, it's a little nicer than Rexxentrum,' she said, finally. 'Lots of rolling hills. Not as nice as Nicodranas, though.' Beau's expression turned a little wistful then, and she shook her head slightly. 'Anyway, computer says thirteen days to Felderwin.' She was strangely distant as she pulled away, and left without saying another word.

Yasha was very confused. In any case, she went and told Molly the good news. He was down in the cargo bay, practicing with his swords. Yasha almost wanted to get her own sword out, but she didn't want to be using up their stock of healing potions.

'Gods, I'm looking forward to eating something that isn't space slop,' Molly said with a relieved sort of sigh. Yasha agreed. Even when it had been Desmond and Gustav's ship, there had never really been enough gold for decent food. The only thing that really kept well over long journeys and was cheap as dirt was space slop. Yasha didn't know what was in it; bugs, she was pretty sure, but also oats, and whey and some other stuff, all blended into a thick paste that was mixed with water.

It was disgusting, but it kept them alive. At least until they got within range of Felderwin. The next two weeks were very boring, and Yasha hated to admit that she was starting to get bored of sparring. Beau had some books on her comms device that she sent to Yasha, but they were all very long, detailed texts about history, and the Empire, and things like that. All except for one very filthy erotic novel that Yasha read five times (not that she would tell Beau that).

They were about half a day out of Felderwin when Beau came back from the cockpit, looking worried. 'There's something wrong,' she said, and brought Yasha and Molly up to the cockpit. The planet of Felderwin was still a little way in the distance. Yasha couldn't see anything that looked wrong, but then, they were far enough away, and the planet was small enough that they probably wouldn't.

'I can't get a hold of my contact,' Beau said.

'So what?' Molly asked, before Yasha could say anything. 'Maybe they're...I dunno, tilling wheat or something. Whatever it is that people do.'

Yasha gave him a look. He was very frustrated, and was taking it out on Beau. Beau, who was more worried about her contact, either didn't notice, or didn't care.

'Sure, that's possible,' Beau agreed. 'And maybe I'd agree with you if I hadn't picked up chatter from Empire ships.'

'Oh,' Molly said. 'Is it safe to get in closer?'

Beau didn't answer, but instead adjusted their trajectory to increase speed. She must have thought that they had enough fuel to do so.

The speed increase put them within visual range of the planet's surface within an hour or so. Having never seen Felderwin, Yasha wasn't sure what she was supposed to be seeing, but...but she was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be that.

There was a lot of smoke. The fact that there was a lot of smoke wasn't the worrying part. Or at least not entirely. The fact that there was so much of it that they could see it from orbit...that was a little more worrying.

The size of those fires...

'That's a lot of wheat,' Beau said, grimly.

Oh.

Well that was not good.

'Are they putting out a distress call?' Molly asked. Yasha was fairly certain that he didn't know anything about how these things worked (and technically, neither did Yasha). It just seemed like one of those things you were supposed to say.

'There are designated frequencies for distress calls,' Beau told them, and Yasha didn't know enough to dispute it, but it sounded plausible. Beau went to the radio, and started scanning the channels until she found what she was looking for.

'— _soldiers came and just started burning things to the ground I think they're from the Empire. Why would_ our _government be killing people—_ '

The message cut out.

'Well I guess we're not getting those I.Ds,' Molly said, with a grimace. He couldn't seem to take his eyes off the smoke. Next to him, Beau hadn't stopped staring either.

'No,' she said, finally.

'What do you mean, no?'

'I mean, there're people down there getting killed, and we have to go and do something about it.'

Molly stared at her semi-incredulously. It was undercut with a tone of almost...relief. 'Why do you give a shit? It's not your planet.' Yasha knew Molly better than to think that he didn't care. He _did_ care. He just wanted to see how much Beau cared.

'No, but it's my shitty government,' she snapped, angrily. Yasha watched as something seemed to click into place for Molly. Yasha had no idea what it was, until he said, softly:

'You're with the Knights of Requital.' It wasn't until he said it, that Yasha had even considered that as a possibility.

Beau's eyes snapped to him. 'You know about the Knights of Requital, but you don't know you need a government ID to get onto Zadash? What the fuck kind of carnie are you?'

'One with ears. Everyone and their dog was talking about the Knights of Requital attack in the Tri-Spires. Took out some key government officials, I heard. The Cerberus Assembly was furious that a petty little resistance was enough to take out some very important people.' They had all read the articles on the news network, about how it was a cowardly terrorist attack, and how the organization responsible was a dangerous group of extremists.

'Well...I mean, “resistance” is a maybe not the right word.' Beau didn't deny her involvement. She didn't particularly look like an extremist, but then Yasha didn't exactly know what an extremist was supposed to look like.

'Well what would you call it then?' Beau frowned, considering the question.

'I'd call it a group of people that don't particularly like being told what gods they're allowed to worship, and what they're allowed to do with their own lives while the rich and powerful take all the gold, and oppress people under their heel. I guess by that definition, you'd call us the proletariat.'

'Yeah, I'll just wait right here for the socialist revolution and go ahead and call you a resistance.' Molly rolled his eyes.

'Fine, we're the resistance.' Beau gave him a look. 'We're doing the things that resistances do, you know, collecting information to overthrow the government. Whatever.'

'And how's that going for you?'

Beau stared down at the burning planet. 'Well, I'm stuck on a ship with an asshole, and a hot mute, so y'know...varies day by day.'

Yasha frowned. 'I have said many words.' She felt a flush rise in her cheeks as Beau shot her a tired sort of wink.

'Alright.' Beau clapped her hands together. 'We need to get down onto that planet, save who we can, and kill and government operatives that we see. Any objections?' Molly balked slightly. Yasha knew that he had never killed anyone.

'Can we maybe...cool it a little on the last one?'

Yasha wasn't sure whether it was her imagination or not, but Beau looked relieved. Maybe she had only ever moved information for the Knights of Requital. 'Sure, no killing. Got it.'

'What about fuel?' Yasha asked. She hadn't looked at the stores, but there couldn't have been much of it left.

Beau didn't answer straight away. 'Well, we came here on the assumption we'd be able to get fuel,' she said. 'If we can't, then...' There was a very long pause. Yasha didn't like the sound of it.

'Let me guess,' Molly said, blithely. 'We'll be dead in space?'

'Something like that. It's not all bad news, though.'

'No?' Molly sounded understandably skeptical.

'Well, you can use the same fuel in any kind of spaceship. Empire ships, Xhorhasian ships, Nicodranas pleasure vessels...they all use the same stuff. So if there's another ship down there...' She trailed off, letting them draw their own conclusions. Yasha nodded. If there were other ships down there, there would be fuel to steal.

'So let me get this straight,' Molly said. 'We used up all of our fuel to avoid getting sucked into the gravity well of a planet, and now we're gonna go ahead and land on one of our own free will?'

'Yeah, that sounds about right.'

'Alright, just making sure.'

It was interesting. The moment that Beau had insisted on going down to the planet and saving people, Molly had done a complete reversal of behavior. Yasha didn't think anyone that didn't know him as well as she did would have noticed it, but the fact that Beau was willing to fight for a planet of farmers had swayed his opinion entirely. He would just never mention that aloud.

'We're probably going to die,' he said. Beau grimaced.

'Probably,' she said. 'But you know what, Mollymauk? There are definitely worse ways to go.'


	4. IV

IV

Felderwin....well, Molly was pretty sure it wasn't exactly his scene. Even if it hadn't been presently burning to the ground around him, it seemed like far too quiet a place to be interesting.

Molly needed people around him. He needed lights, and color and entertainment. The only color here was brown, and green, and the thick, dark gray of billowing smoke.

They'd “landed” about half a dozen miles from the smoke, hopefully managing to avoid the sensors of any Empire ships on the planet. As Beau had said (with a not very believable look on her face), they were probably more concerned about the people that were on the planet, rather than the people coming down from the sky. Even still, she'd deliberated given them a rough landing, as though to make it look like it hadn't been by choice. Molly didn't think he would forgive her any time soon for the brand-new bruises on his ass. ('You wouldn't be able to do that on Zadash or Rexxentrum,' Beau had said. 'Plenty of radar and surface-to-air missiles.')

Yasha, at least, looked like she found the place interesting, but then, Yasha was from a planet where there was very little life at all, so the grass and the trees, and even the wheat was new to her. In spite of the urgency of the situation, she was taking in her surroundings with an awed sort of look.

'They grow wheat here?' she asked, looking around.

'Plus some other crops,' Beau told her. 'Barley, sugarcane...Or at least they did, I guess.' She grimaced. 'So what kind of weapons do you guys have?'

'Well, we're circus performers,' Molly told her, dryly. 'We have mostly blunt swords.' Beau stared at him, as though hoping that he was somehow joking about the situation. He wasn't sure why; she had seen the swords in action, after all. There was something about space travel that made swords a little safer. Something about not having high-speed projectiles zooming about a pressurized spaceship inches from a vacuum.

'Fuck,' she said. Molly thought it was very hypocritical of her. After all, it wasn't as though she had a weapon either.  _Someone_ had shot at her before she crawled her way onto the ship. Now that they knew what they knew about Beau, and about what she did, he was pretty sure that whoever had shot her had probably been with the Empire.

_Hmmm._ Maybe it wasn't the best idea to come here.

There were a lot of reasons why it wasn't the best idea to come here. The main one, of course, being that there was barely enough fuel to start the ship up again, let along break through the atmosphere. They definitely wouldn't be going anywhere without stealing fuel, or stealing another ship. Just in case, Molly and Yasha took their backpacks with them. Beau still had pretty much nothing.

'Why don't you have a gun?' he asked. Beau shrugged.

'I'm more of a puncher,' she said.  _That_ , at least, he knew was true. Against his better judgment, he had been pretty impressed by some of the moves that he had seen her pull against Yasha. 'I can probably get one though.' She didn't seem to think that it was necessary to explain exactly  _how_ she was going to get one. 'Maybe we should scope out the scene first.'

Molly didn't see that there was really any way to scope out the scene without making their presence known, if it wasn't already. The thing about landing a spaceship was that it wasn't exactly a quiet process. He was pretty sure that if they didn't get out of there soon, then the absence of guns would no longer be a problem.

Still, Beau seemed to at least have some idea of what she was doing. Molly had the strangest impression that this wasn't the first time that she had landed on an Empire-occupied planet in order to complete a mission, though it was probably the first time she'd done it with a couple of carnies in tow.

The first thing they did was get well out of the way of the ship, taking a path that was away from the smoke. Molly tried not to think too hard about the fact that it meant when they did inevitably head towards the smoke, their walk would be that much longer.

There were plenty of trees here, at least. It gave them a lot of cover from anyone that might be looking for them, but on the downside, it also made it harder to see whatever else was going on. The leapfrogged from tree to tree, until they reached a steep drop down into the valley. The hillside was dense enough that even though they had some height, it was difficult to see what was going on.

'Over here.' Beau led them to a tree, and gave an expectant sort of look. Molly didn't get it. Then, Beau vaulted up the tree like it was a staircase, and then looked down expectantly at Molly and Yasha from the third bough. It took a little longer than Molly was proud to admit, but eventually, both he and Yasha made it up into the tree.

Molly had sort of expected to only have a view of more trees, but they were high enough up that they sort of had a decent view of their surroundings.

The town they'd landed near was on the edge of a river, surrounded by burning fields and foothills of nearby mountains. If it hadn't been in a valley, then they wouldn't have gotten anywhere near as good a view. Most of the fire seemed to be on the other side of the town. The crops closer to them were unburned.

There were several dozen or so vehicles that definitely looked military, and might have even had the seal of the Empire painted on their side, but it was hard to tell from this distance. While many of the crops were burning, the town itself seemed close to untouched. Molly recognized fear tactics when he saw them, even if he wasn't a member of the resistance. The Empire wanted something, and they clearly hadn't gotten it yet.

'Any ideas?' Molly asked, understanding, much to his displeasure, that he was not going to be the expert in this situation. Or in any situation, unless said situation involved juggling swords, or faking a tarot card reading.

'A few,' Beau told him. 'None of them that are any good, though, unless you're willing to be handcuffed.' There were a  _lot_ of things that Molly could have retorted to that sentence (especially given how willing Beau seemed to be to let Yasha put her in mount during their sparring sessions) but for once in his life, he didn't say anything.

'We could cause a distraction,' Yasha suggested. 'Something loud that would draw them away, before sneaking in.'

Beau seemed to be deep in thought. 'There are probably barns around here,' she said. Molly gave her an incredulous, utterly confused look.

'Are we going to drive a tractor into town? Maybe set some hay on fire?'

'Well there's probably fertilizer,' Beau said, reasonably. 'But places like this probably have rules as to how much you can have, and how to store it safely. We might have to hit a few.' Molly still had no idea what she was talking about, and clearly, neither did Yasha.

Beau frowned. 'There are some fertilizers that also make very good explosives,' she said. 'We might be able to set a barn on fire, or something. Big boom.'

Molly raised an eyebrow. 'Is that something that the resistance taught you?'

'No, that's something that growing up on Kamordah taught me.'

The planet sounded familiar. Molly wasn't sure where he'd heard it before. He was pretty sure it was in the Empire, but not one of the core planets. 'They grow wheat on Kamordah?'

'Grapes.' Huh. So definitely land-born then. Interesting. The fact that she was willing to share that with them...if she was a spy, she was a pretty shitty one. Even for a resistance fighter, Molly was pretty sure they weren't supposed to be going around telling people things like the planet that they grew up on. Apparently she trusted them, which was...

Well, it was fucking hilarious.

Molly had never been trusted by anyone in his life, except maybe Yasha. Certainly not by Gustav or Desmond. The idea that Beau, who had hated him since the day she met him, found him trustworthy?

Ridiculous.

'So your solution to the problem at hand is domestic terrorism?' Molly asked.

'It's not really domestic,' Beau said with a shrug. 'Unless either one of you is secretly from Felderwin. I suppose you could make an argument for it being domestic terrorism against the Empire, but then only one of us is from the Empire.'

'Way to rub it in,' Molly muttered. 'So your contact. I'm assuming they live in the town that's currently being raided by the Empire?'

'Yup.' Beau grimaced. 'She's a legit businesswoman here, so I'm hoping that they're not here for her. Runs an alchemy shop.' She looked worried. Molly had figured that the person that they were here to meet was just a contact, but he suddenly realized that it actually was a friend. It hadn't been a figure of speech.

'What's her name?' Yasha asked. Beau, who was staring out at the pillars of smoke, didn't answer. Molly nudged her.

'Hmm?'

'Your contact. What's her name?'

'Oh. Uh...Veth Brenatto. She's a halfling. She saved my ass...well, she's saved it a few times, actually. Lives here with her husband and son.' There was an awkward sort of silence. Beau was clearly concerned for her friend's well-being, but didn't want it to get in the way of what they had to do.

Must've been a shitty way to go through life.

They climbed back down the tree, and started edging their way down into the valley. There were a couple of wooden structures in amongst the fields of grain, but whether or not they were what they were looking for, Molly didn't know. If all else failed, then maybe they could just set the crops on fire.

He didn't much like that plan.

Didn't much like the plan of blowing up a barn, either. Once the Empire left, these people still had to live their lives, after all. If they burned crops, or blew up a barn, how were they any different?

'We might just be able to sneak in,' he said. 'Or pretend that we could do the “escaped prisoners” bit. I'm coming around on the idea of handcuffs.'

Beau seemed skeptical, and Molly didn't blame her. The escaped prisoners gambit would only work if they had an enemy uniform, and even then...it was too much to hope that there were enough Empire lackeys hanging around that an unfamiliar one wouldn't go unrecognized. 'Let's at least get to the barn, and then we can regroup,' Beau said. Molly looked at Yasha, who shrugged.

They made their way into the valley.

It was slow going. The hillside was steep, and covered in tree roots that didn't seem to attack to anything. The soil was loose, and even Beau seemed to slip with nearly every step. By the time they'd gone half a mile, Molly was dripping with sweat. Leather pants, as it turned out, weren't great for hiking in, and those structures were a lot further away than they looked.

But, if they didn't keep moving, then Molly didn't like to think of what would happen to the townspeople. Somewhere along the line, he'd grown a conscience. Whoever had had this body before him would have been so disappointed. Molly tried not to bother himself with that thought. Whoever had had this body before him was a dickhead.

The crops, thankfully were high enough to provide a little bit of shade. It didn't look like wheat, and smelled strangely sweet. 'What is this?' he asked, not because he wanted to know, but because the silence was getting a little bit deafening.

'Sugarcane,' Beau said, briefly. She sounded just as tired as he did. Huh. Maybe she was human after all.

They were about sixty feet from the wooden structure, when Beau gestured for them to stop. Molly wondered if she thought that the building was a trap. They waited for about seven minutes. Molly wasn't entirely sure what they were waiting for. Then, Beau started to move forward.

After that, everything happened all at once.

There was shouting, and things being pointed, and things being thrown, and about six seconds later, Molly found a three foot tall halfling woman standing in front of him, a gun pointed right at his junk.

'Alright, nobody move,' she screeched, 'Or Mr. Fancypants gets it.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still here, I guess...


	5. V

V

The halfling came out of nowhere. Yasha thought herself to be reasonably perceptive, and yet she hadn't noticed the small, armed figure edging along the side of the barn until it was too late.

Yasha grabbed the halfling's hand, and ripped the gun out of it. While she could have sworn she'd had a tight grip, the halfling managed to wriggle out of the restraint with remarkable ease.

'Veth!' Beau said, loudly. 'Veth!' The halfling stopped.

'What the fuck are you doing here?' the halfling (Veth, Yasha presumed) demanded. 'Are you with  _them_ ?' Veth bent to her ankle, and pulled yet another gun from her boot. This one, she pointed at Beau, who, to her credit, looked utterly unperturbed.

'Of course I'm not fucking  _with them._ ' Beau rolled her eyes. 'I was coming to see you, and I show up and there's a fucking zillion Empire ships. What the fuck is going on?'

'What the fuck do you think is going on?' Veth looked over her shoulder back into the barn, and Yasha took the opportunity to snatch the new gun out of her hand. 'Hey! Will you stop fucking—'

'Is it safe in there?' Beau asked, distracting the halfling before she could grab yet another gun.

'For now.' Veth looked worried. 'Get inside. And give me back my fucking guns!'

Yasha looked to Beau, who nodded. Somewhat reluctantly, Yasha handed the weapons back to the halfling, who narrowed her eyes at Yasha before putting the smaller gun back in her boot. She gestured into the barn with a sidelong look at Beau.

They went inside.

Yasha didn't think she'd ever been in a barn before. Iothia hadn't exactly been teeming with life, cultivated or otherwise. It was a miracle that the Dolorav people had managed to survive there. Yasha's favorite part about traveling to new planets was seeing all the different kinds of life that she had never seen before.

It smelled musty. There was hay, and a tractor, plus what looked like a couple of very shell-shocked cows.

'Did you bring them here?' Beau asked, skeptically.

'I panicked!' Veth said. 'I thought they might be in danger out there. Turns out they're just weird and creepy.' She shuddered slightly, and shot an angry look towards the cows. She then led them up to a loft that had a window that had a reasonable, if small view towards the village. They all squashed in close together, but the window was so small that Yasha and Molly could barely see.

'How many of them are there?' Molly asked.

'More than we could take out alone,' Beau said, in a very serious tone of voice. 'Causing a distraction and then stealing a ship might still be our best option.'

'They took my husband, and my son,' Veth said, her voice shaking slightly. 'I'm not going anywhere until we get them back.'

'Fuck,' Beau said, and Yasha didn't blame her. A rescue mission hadn't been in their plans. But then, a strong Empire presence hadn't been either. 'Where did they take them?'

'I don't know. A lot of the prisoners they've already taken off world. Who knows why.' At this point, she gave Beau a look. 'Maybe they think that the Resistance has some stronghold in Felderwin.' There was a long pause. 'But then, my husband is a pretty good alchemist, so maybe they wanted him for that.' She sounded like she was trying to reassure herself, Yasha thought. That if the Empire had some sort of need for her husband, then they wouldn't kill him. Yasha didn't like those odds. She knew what places like the Empire did to people they didn't need. She knew what it was like to lose someone that you loved dearly.

The memory of Zuala still burned a hole in her chest, some days. An ache that would never go away. She could go to Zadash, Rexxentrum, Marquet, and the pain of that loss would be as strong as it had been on the day that Zuala had died.

'Is there?' Molly asked, staring directly at Veth.

'Is there what?'

'A resistance presence in Felderwin.'

'Oh, you know.' Veth waved a non-committal hand. Yasha presumed that to mean “yes.” Whether that just meant Veth, or whether there were more people, it was hard to tell, though. Yasha was starting to suspect that she and Molly had perhaps gotten in over their heads. 'Did you have a plan coming in here, or did you just want to blow my cover?'

'Well,' Molly said. He had been uncharacteristically quiet so far. 'We were just planning on blowing some things up.' In an instant, Veth's expression turned from pensive, to excited.

'You know,' she said. 'I think I can help you with that.'

'We've blown up a few things together,' Beau offered by way of explanation. Neither of them seemed particularly inclined to explain  _what_ they had blown up. Given their associations, Yasha didn't think that it had been anything small. Even traveling with the circus, news about the resistance had been scattered at best, and actively suppressed at worst. To find out what really happened, you had to know the right people, and a group of carnies traveling the galaxy to perform shows was not the right group of people.

There was a very long silence. 'How well does hay burn?' Beau asked. Veth grinned.

They got the cows out before they set fire to the barn. Beau and Molly, strangely, were the most insistent on getting them to a safe distance. Yasha wondered how they'd wandered here in the first place. There wasn't any pasture nearby. Maybe in the chaos of the Empire landing...

There was another few minutes of discussing exactly how they were going to set the fire. In the end, Veth procured a glass bottle of what looked like whiskey, and tore a strip from her dress. Instead of throwing it through the open door, Beau broke a window. 'Trust me,' she said, and for some reason, Yasha did.

They all moved a safe distance away while Beau threw the bottle. She had a look of joyous determination on her face as she did it.

As soon as the fire took, they ran. Through the wheat towards Felderwin proper. It was a risk, but it was a risk that they would have to take, because it wasn't as though they were going to be able to steal a ship out here in the fields. It wasn't until they were on the very outskirts of the village, huffing and panting, that Yasha realized just how bad a situation they were in. She could hear the shouts of Empire soldiers, searching through the wheat. Apparently their distraction hadn't been nearly as distracting as they had wanted. Thick, dark smoke choked the sky, but so much of the village had already been burned that it wasn't much of a difference.

A few sharp cracks rent through the air. Yasha instinctively ducked. 'They've seen us!' Veth said, in a horrified whisper.

There was shouting, and more gunfire. Yasha pressed her face to the dirt. It was a horrifyingly familiar sensation. Her heart pounded just as fast as the automatic weapon the soldiers seemed to be firing.

The shouting was getting closer.

'You are surrounded,' the voice said. 'If you move, we will shoot. If you try to fight back, we will shoot. Get down on your knees, and put your hands behind your head.'

_Fuck_ .

Next to her, Yasha watched as Beau got down on her knees. The expression on her face was unreadable. 'Throw me under the bus,' Beau whispered. Yasha stared at her, startled.

'What?'

'Throw me under the bus,' she repeated. 'I was a stowaway on your ship and forced you to land here. You don't know who I am or where I'm from.'

Yasha was about to say that she wasn't going to do that, but Molly opened his mouth first. He had already gone to his knees 'Done,' he said.

'Molly—'

'Yash, hon, if it's a choice between you or her, then I don't even have to think about who I'm going to choose.'

'The feeling's mutual,' Beau said, grimly. She didn't even turn her attention away from the ground. She seemed strangely calm about the whole situation. If Yasha had been a more suspicious person, she would have wondered if Beau had planned their capture. That didn't seem likely, unless she thought that it was the only way that they could get a ship.

'I'll throw you all under the bus,' Veth muttered. She was already on her knees, but she was so short that it hardly looked any different. 'What the fuck, Beau? You used to be good at this.'

Finally, Beau tore her gaze away from the ground and looked directly at Veth. 'You want your family back, right?'

There was a long pause. 'Right,' Veth said.

'Where do you think they're going to take us?'

_Oh._

This wasn't about stealing ships at all, Yasha realized, suddenly. This was about getting Veth to her family.

'They'll kill you,' Veth said. It wasn't a question.

'No they won't.' Beau sounded so sure of herself, so resolute, that Yasha almost believed her. 'Trust me.' This time, Yasha wasn't sure.

There was no time for further discussion. The soldiers had cut through the wheat, had trained their weapons at the group. It felt horrifyingly familiar, and Yasha felt that burn in her chest once more as she remembered Zuala, and everything that had happened on Iothia.

She knew how this went.

Blindfolded, forced to the knees. Two quick shots to the skull. Not even enough time for the light to leave her eyes. Yasha, covered in blood.

Her vision narrowed, and all she could see was the dirt in front of her. Stained with the imaginery blood of the past.

'Yasha.' The voice sounded like it was coming from very far away. Was that Zuala's voice? Was that Zuala coming to meet her? 'Yasha,' the voice said again. This time it was a little clearer. Male.

Not Zuala.

Molly.

Molly needed her.

Yasha came back to herself. She was on the ground still, hands intertwined behind her head, breathing heavily. The rest of them were standing, cuffed. Beau's face was bleeding and bruised, and she was slumping slightly. She also had two guards on her to everyone else's one. Veth looked a little put out by that.

For the first time in her life, Yasha didn't fight back. She could have fought back – she wanted to fight back – but there were too many of them. That, and...well, this was apparently the plan. Yasha wished Beau would have discussed it with her. If it was a choice between capture and death, Yasha didn't much like the thought of being captured. Didn't like being tied up against her will, forced into shackles that she couldn't break free from...

They cuffed Yasha, and dragged her to her feet.

She didn't like this at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out I remember how sentences work, I guess.
> 
> I won't lie, this chapter was tough to get out, and the next probably will be too, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually.


	6. VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please ignore the ridiculous break due to Real Life Stuff.

VI

Yasha tried not to resist as they were dragged to the bowels of the ship.

To not fight, to let herself be taken, went against every instinct that she had, and it was only her fear for Molly, and perhaps a little bit for Beau, that she didn’t lean into those instincts anyway.

The ship had the same stark, cold aesthetic that Yasha would have expected anything run by the Empire to have. Not that she’d ever seen an Empire ship, or even an Empire planet save for Felderwin.

Veth had mentioned that her husband and son had also been taken prisoner, but there were no other people down here in the cells. Maybe this was the last ship, and them the last prisoners. Or maybe because they were in the company of someone from the Knights of Requital, they got put somewhere else.

Beau put a finger to her bloodied lips. Sometime in among all the chaos, she’d taken a few licks to the face. She gestured up to the right-hand corner of Molly’s cell, where there was a small black circle with a blinking red light. ‘Don’t say anything you don’t want them to hear.’ She made no effort to whisper, and apparently didn’t care if they knew she had seen their security camera.

The guards that had brought them here had taken off Yasha and Veth and Molly’s cuffs, but not Beau’s. That, in addition to the bloodied lip, made Yasha think that they already knew who she was, and what she represented. It was no wonder that Beau had told them all to throw her under the bus. She must have felt like she didn’t have anything left to lose.

Yasha could understand why. She remembered Iothia, and everything that had happened there. Had remembered her life at its lowest point, and how hopeless everything had seemed. Somehow, being imprisoned on an Empire ship was an improvement on that.

‘“Don’t say anything you don’t want them to hear?”’ Veth said, in an almost mocking voice. ‘Well here’s something I don’t care if they hear, fuck you. They never would have found me in that barn if you hadn’t showed up.’ Yasha wasn’t sure if Veth was putting on her anger for the cameras, but something told her that this was genuine anger.

Beau seemed unperturbed. She was pacing the small cell as much as the cuffs around her ankles would allow, apparently looking for some kind of weakness. Yasha didn’t like her chances. This wasn’t some mud-floored tent in the middle of the swamp, this was an Empire ship. The only way that they would be escaping was if someone let them.

No-one came.

Though there were no windows in the room, Yasha could feel the acceleration as they took of, heading skyward. None of them had seatbelts, or straps, or anything to stop the high gravitational forces from tossing them around like bouncy balls. Yasha had never seen a bouncy ball before until Molly gave her one.

Bouncy balls, she was sure, didn’t have breakable limbs. Luckily, the most any of them seemed to get was bruises.

‘That,’ Molly said, panting hard, with his back resting against the cell wall, ‘Is something I never want to do again. Holy shit, couldn’t you have been wanted by someone with comfortable chairs?’

Before Beau could answer, a strange hissing sound, followed by the door opening signaled the arrival of Empire agents.

There were two of them, both wearing a different kind of Empire uniform that Yasha had never seen before. That wasn’t saying much. She had only seen one kind of Empire uniform before.

This uniform was black, with purple trimming on the edges, and neither of them seemed to be wearing anything to indicate rank.

The woman was short – at least, shorter than Yasha – and had  a lopsided blonde bob A large burn scar spanned from her chin, to the bottom of her neck.

The man had red hair that was pulled back into a low ponytail, his chin and cheeks free of stubble, as though he had shaved just that morning.

While the woman had a look of utter indifference on her face, the man seemed to eye all of them curiously.

‘Bring the tall one,’ he said, finally, and Yasha did not need to be a genius to see who he was referring to. Neither Molly nor Beau were exactly giants.

‘Leave them out of this!’ Beau snarled, from the far cell. She had dragged herself as far as the chains would allow, which wasn’t very far. The man switched his gaze, and held it for a very long time. 

‘Master Ikithon will want to question the traitor himself,’ the woman said, and Yasha wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but both Beau and the man seemed to flinch slightly. Clearly it was a name that was recognizable, even if she had never heard it before.

‘No!’ Molly called out, as Yasha was pulled to her feet. She could take the two newcomers on easily, she thought. No sooner than the idea had crossed her mind, a pulse of agonizing pain hit her. Blood dripped from her nose.

‘Violence will not be tolerated,’ the woman said. Neither she, nor the man had so much as flicked their wrist. There was some kind of power there, something that they could do without anyone seeing it.

‘Your friend will not be harmed,’ the man said. ‘We will just be asking questions.’

‘To start,’ the woman added.

Yasha let them take her to a small room down the hallway. This far down, she could feel the hum of the engine, the pulse of thrusters, the buzz of the life-support system. Yasha had no doubt that they were being taken deeper into the Empire, and yet this was not the way she would have wanted to get there.

‘My name is Bren,’ the man said. Yasha was surprised. She hadn’t expected either of them to give a name. The woman, notably, said nothing. Yasha wasn’t sure if the furrow in her brow meant that she too was surprised, or she was letting Bren do the talking while she watched. ‘What is your name?’

‘I...Yasha.’ Yasha did not think there was any point in lying about that, as much as she wanted to. It wasn’t as though her name would mean anything to the Empire.

‘Where are you from?’

‘Nicodranas,’ Yasha said, immediately, and she could tell that they did not believe her. It would take even the simplest question about the beach planet to realize that she was lying.

Strangely, the man – Bren – did not push her on the issue, even though the woman’s eyebrows were raised skeptically. 

‘How long have you been in the Empire?’

Yasha frowned. She didn’t know when they had crossed over into Empire space. It could have been days ago. It could have been a week ago. But the first time she’d ever landed on an Empire planet…

‘Since this morning.’

The skeptical look did not leave the woman’s face, and in an instant, Yasha flashed back to something that Molly had said, what felt like years ago;  _You remember those stories that Desmond used to tell about Scourgers, right?_

Yasha couldn’t tell whether these agents looked like assassins. She’d never met an assassin before. She supposed that they would dress in dark clothing, and be very mysterious, but then, she also dressed in dark clothing and was very mysterious, and she wasn’t an assassin.

‘When did you meet Beauregard Lionett?’ Bren said. He had a vague air of indifference about him, like he didn’t care enough about what was going on to take it too seriously. This seemed to frustrate the woman a little.

‘Who?’ Yasha didn’t have to pretend to not know what he was talking about. She _definitely_ didn’t know who Beauregard Lionett was. Though that last name did sound familiar. Yasha couldn’t figure out why.

The man pressed a button on the device in his hands, and an image flickered onto the wall opposite Yasha. It looked like a mugshot. Beau’s mugshot. Molly had been right; her name definitely wasn’t Rainbeau Lacroix.

In the photo, she had a black eye and a cocky sort of smile that revealed several missing teeth. While the woman down in the holding cells was about twenty-five, the one in the picture didn’t look much older than twenty. Still, getting into fistfights was apparently something that she’d been doing for a long time.

‘Oh,’ Yasha said. ‘I...I didn’t know that was her name.’ Not a lie, and the man narrowed his eyes. ‘I, I have not known her very long. She stowed away on our ship.’

It pained Yasha to do what Beau had told her to do, but she didn’t think that anything she said would in any way help the situation. Besides, she  _didn’t_ know anything about the Resistance, even if she had wanted to tell them.

‘Where was her intended destination?’

‘I...I don’t know.’

‘Why did you stop in Felderwin?’ 

Yasha opened her mouth, and then closed it again. She couldn’t explain why they had come to Felderwin without also throwing Veth under the bus.

‘We were running out of fuel.’ Each thing she said grew a little more desperate in tone, and yet she could not help it. Why had they taken her first? Molly was a much better liar. He, at least, might have been able to convince them of something.

They would ask about the barn, now. Ask why they had set the barn on fire to try and hurt the Empire.

Then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped. There were no further questions.

Yasha was confused. She had barely been in there five minutes, and now they were done? That didn’t seem right.

She tripped over her feet a little as the man led her back to her cell. His head was unnerving close to hers as he unlocked the cell door. ‘Be ready,’ he whispered into her ear. Yasha frowned.  _Be ready? What did that mean?_ Who was Bren that he was telling her to be ready?

Yasha tried to catch his eye, to try and find out exactly what she was supposed to be ready for, but Bren’s face was affixed with the same indifferent stare that it had been for the last half an hour.

They took Molly next, the tiefling spouting off some choice insults as they pulled him away. Yasha wondered if the questions would be the same, or if they had come to a decision that she didn’t know anything and had stopped her interrogation early.

If they were hoping that Molly would somehow be  _more_ knowledgeable, then they were going to be disappointed. Molly took great pride in knowing nothing about anything.

‘What did they ask you?’ Beau had stopped pacing, and was now sitting against the bars of the cell that separated it from Yasha’s.

‘Not a lot,’ Yasha admitted. ‘My name, where I was from. How long I have known you.’

Very briefly, Beau looked surprised, but then she seemed to cover it up. ‘Hmm. They’ll probably have more questions later.’ It was not a comforting thought. Yasha didn’t know anything to be able to tell them.

To her surprise, barely even a minute later, the door opened again. Instead of the two agents returning with Mollymauk, this time someone else walked through the door.

The man was tall, and heavily muscled, but wore the same uniform as the other two. He went, not for Veth’s cell, as Yasha had expected, but for Beau’s.

‘Hey, man, watch it,’ Beau spat, as she was yanked to her feet. Hands and feet still cuffed, she had no way to steady herself.

‘Where are you taking her?’ Yasha asked. She wasn’t expecting a response. 

The hulking man did not even stop to look at her. ‘Questioning,’ he said. There was something dark in his voice that Yasha didn’t entirely like. As though questioning was the least of what he planned on doing. Was this the “Ikithon” that the other two had mentioned?

Yasha still had very little idea what was going on, but she knew that Beau would be gone for a lot longer than five minutes.

**Author's Note:**

> Pairings not entirely decided on yet, but I'm sure everyone knows which way I usually go. Tell me if there are any particular pairings that you'd like to see.
> 
> I don't know shit about orbital mechanics, or astrophysics or literally anything to do with space flight, so please take everything with a grain of salt and just enjoy the ride.


End file.
